The Making of the African Diaspora

Student Learning Outcomes, Goals, Objectives:

Students successfully completing this course will be able to:

• Explain the key historical processes that shaped the African diaspora across the Indian Ocean and Atlantic worlds
• Analyze how enslaved and displaced Africans maintained, transformed, and created culture under conditions of extreme violence
• Evaluate the role of gender and family in shaping diaspora experiences
• Interpret the relationship between religion, spirituality, and resistance
• Interpret primary sources from diverse diaspora communities
• Compare diasporic experiences across the Indian Ocean and Atlantic worlds

Course Grading Information:

Activity/Performance Measure	Percentage/Points
Discussion Posts (15 posts + replies)	20%
Unit Reflection Quizzes	20%
Primary Source Analysis	15%
Comparative Essay	20%
Final Research Paper	25%

Grading Scale

Percentage	Letter Grade
93-100	A
90-92	A-
87-89	B+
83-86	B
80-82	B-
77-79	C+
73-76	C
70-72	C-
67-69	D+
63-66	D
60-62	D-
0-59	F

Attendance/Participation:

This is a fully asynchronous course with no required meeting times and no separate attendance grade. Student engagement is assessed through weekly discussion posts and peer replies (20% of the final grade) and end-of-unit reflection quizzes (20%), as detailed above. Canvas automatically drops each student's three lowest quiz/discussion scores to accommodate occasional missed weeks; no additional attendance policy applies.

Course Materials Purchased by the Students:

Patrick Manning, The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture (Columbia University Press, 2009). This is the only text students are required to purchase; all other readings (articles, book excerpts, and primary sources) are provided free of charge through Canvas.